Jacked (33 page)

She didn’t seem to agree. “It’s hideous, and huge.”

I took her face in my hands. “Doc, look at me. Seriously, it’s a small bruise. It will disappear in a couple of days. I’ve got a two-inch gash in my hand that’s tied up with your stitches. We’re just having a row of bad luck.”

Being this close to her, catching the all too familiar fragrance coming off her clean skin, it was as if she’d branded herself just for me, bathing her entire body in my scent. Curiosity and base male instinct had me sniffing her hair next.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

I couldn’t suppress my groan. “You smell like me.”

She looked apologetic. “You told me to take a shower.”

“I thought you’d use the girl stuff.”

She shook her head; long wet strands swished back and forth, tickling the backs of my hands. “Decided against it.”

I couldn’t hide my smile. “Yeah?”

Her shoulder tipped up. “I didn’t want to smell like a reminder of someone else.” She sniffed her arm. “I’d rather smell like you.”

Holy shit. I think I’m in love.

That was it.

Her five simple words tipped me right over the edge.

If
want
could take human form, it just possessed me from head to toe and clouded my every thought. And now I wanted to possess this woman as much as she’d possessed me—inside and out. Gone was the guy who questioned how far I was willing to overlook her drinking binge while freezing his nuts off for two hours this morning shoveling heavy snow and ice.

Those vibrant blue eyes gazed up at me, glistening with anticipation, rimmed with a hint of fear but open to trust, calling on every carnal instinct deep within me to own her heart.

I wanted to dive in, take what I wanted so desperately, but I restrained myself, using her reactions to gauge if I had an open invitation. I had never forced myself on a woman before and I sure as hell wasn’t starting now.

But her soft pink lips parted, her eyes darted from mine, down to my mouth, then back up to seeing right into my wretched soul. That was all the invitation I needed. Her stretching to meet my mouth halfway caused that winded feeling to blast my chest, taking away my ability to breathe.

Excitement flashed through me like a million tiny shards of sheer energy, tensing my muscles, tingling down my spine, driving me to that point where everything and nothing merge and consumes you. The soft brush of her beckoning tongue pushed all of my doubts and lingering fears right out the fucking window. Nothing in my life had ever felt so right as her lips on mine—

N o t O n e T h i n g.

This woman, this luscious creature, had been haunting my every waking moment and much of my unconscious ones since the moment I met her and by some dumb luck or twist of fate here she was, in my hands like a precious jewel, letting me show her exactly how I’d been feeling but unwilling to admit.

Her teeth scraped over my bottom lip, sucking and pulling and just as hungry, echoing that same sensation right into the depths of my jeans. If just kissing her was this mind-blowing then making love to her would surely be the death of me. I’d been bleeding inside for so long, missing something I couldn’t quite name. It was hard to hide just how desperate I was for her to heal me.

Her fingertips pressed into my sides and curled, tugging and gripping my shirt in bunches. I tangled my fingers into her damp hair, hanging on for dear life, marking her memories so she’d never want to think of another man ever again.

I’d been down for so long, I forgot how it felt to be happy. I’d been doing time, not living it. A prisoner of my own doing. Erin was a breath of freedom and a lifeline of sunshine and damn if she didn’t taste like perfection.

…mixed with my mint toothpaste.

Our kiss slowed, our lips rested, our breaths both came out in pants. It was the best and scariest feeling, like the exhilaration that comes from jumping out a plane and landing in a safety net piled with pillows and knowing you’d survived the wildest ride of your life.

If I go in for another kiss, I’m not coming up for air.

And fuck being afraid.

Or hesitant.

Or unsure.

I held her jaw, hoping she could see all I wanted to say to her but wasn’t quite ready to say out loud.

Not yet. That would have to wait, and be earned.

But this kiss, it was enough to seal our fate. At least for me it was, because I could see so many unsaid words flashing in her wounded eyes, basically asking the same thing.

Will you hurt me if I let you in?

Can we go forward without being torn apart inside?

I want to want you.

And I’m scared, too.

But I’m drunk on you and I need you to feel this high again because if this is how you make me soar from one kiss, imagine what else we can feel inside.

And yes, you’ve turned this hard-hearted bastard into a poet.

Most of the time, when I’m kissing a girl, I feel nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. More like physical horniness mixed with a bit of deviousness, plotting the quickest way to getting the woman naked and my balls emptied. That had been my only goal since ending things with Nikki. Make no ties with anyone who crossed my path, have no worries. Things were simpler that way. Manageable.

But Erin was different. I don’t know how but I could just feel it inside. I felt different with her, as if she had this invisible hold on me, tethering me with renewed purpose.

The hold Nikki once had had on me was nothing compared to this.

The granite top of my kitchen island was looking to be the perfect height for me to crawl up inside this amazing woman, but I won’t. Erin isn’t the type I want to fuck and chuck to the curb. I knew that for sure now. All my senses were telling me that would be a waste of a good woman.

A small “wow” slipped out of her wet mouth when I rested my forehead on hers. I had to agree.

I knew I should back up, re-evaluate, slow the fuck down, but that seemed too far away from her and I just didn’t want that separation yet.

The smile I felt burning on the inside came out on my face.

Part of me considered whether or not I should just toss her over my shoulder, carry her to my bed, and continue this until neither of us could walk or move. My mind had wrapped itself tightly around that single notion. My hard-on definitely loved that idea too, even giving me a standing ovation for being brilliant.

But the weight of her sadness was still lying heavily around her despite having new things fluttering around her busy mind. She didn’t need to say it; I could feel it.

I skimmed my nose over hers, wanting to stay locked together somehow. “Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.”

Her fingers slipped up my back, sending another shiver through me. Erin’s shy approach was beyond sexy.

“Is that so?” she whispered.

I shrugged. “I’m just saying.”

She smiled coyly. “You’re just saying?”

“Just saying.” Playing with her was such a turn-on.

Her fingernails scraped over my sides again from my small taunt when I faked backing away, unwilling to relinquish her hold on my shirt. Hell if that wasn’t a turn-on, too.

I went in for another kiss. Carrying her off to my bed and fucking her stupid crossed my mind again, this time with clearer, more vivid pictures.

Pictures I’d hoped to paste around the entire inside of my skull and keep the leftovers in my wallet.

Erin’s lips let go first.

Another time, perhaps
. I tried to back up, get out of her space. It was after I kissed her forehead that it struck me how natural that felt. “Eat your sandwich.”

I set two bowls of soup down and sat next to her, dipping half of my sandwich right into my hot broth, trying to get my hard-on to subside. No sense putting on false pretenses. I was glad to see she was able to eat, even though she was taking small bites. There was nothing worse than rot gut from a hangover. Been there, done that.

“Your stomach feeling better?”

She nodded, puckering her lips to blow on another spoonful. An urge to snag the spoon away from her and kiss her again came on like a sudden hurricane.

“This is delicious. You make it?”

I finished the last of my grilled cheese. “Nope. This is mom soup.”

She leaned back over her bowl. “I love mom soup.”

“It cures whatever ails you. Well, that’s what we were raised to believe.”

And just like that, my favorite doctor curled into herself a bit more. It was tiny but noticeable. Over at my stove, I filled my bowl back up to the top. She was still in her protective ball when I sat back down.

“You’re killing my ego, you know.”

She glanced over at me. “I am?”

I stirred my noodles around with my spoon. “Yep. Usually a woman isn’t so sad after kissing me. I fear I’m losing my touch.”

At least she smiled.

“You’re not losing your touch. Trust me.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” I took another bite of my sandwich. “You want to talk about it?”

She looked back over at me. “Talk about what?”

“Whatever it
is
that’s weighing heavy on your mind.”

“I wouldn’t know where to start.”

I set my spoon down and turned to face her. Something was telling me I was still partly to blame here somehow. I’d spent my entire life conquering things that tried to break me. A few situations got close to wrecking me for good, but I had to keep reminding myself that there was nothing that I couldn’t overcome.

Guilt, however, was laying its heavy hand on my shoulder, weaving its malevolence up into my thoughts. The fact that I went from avoiding Erin, to accusing her of being a drunk, to making out with her in my kitchen, wasn’t lost on me. Last thing I wanted to do was mess with her head. Time to own up to my mistakes and take the heat.

“Start by talking.”

I noticed her hand trembled slightly when she scratched her eyebrow. She probably feels like wrung-out garbage being hung-over.

“I lost a pediatric patient yesterday. It’s… it’s hitting me hard.”

My body jerked, ready to console her. Misty blue eyes hesitantly glanced over at me and just like that I was rendered helpless, feeling powerless to fix whatever was causing her such grief. Maybe that’s why I found myself over at her house so many times this past week, unable to ring her damn door, but repairing everything else I could get my hands on beyond the rift I’d made between us.

“She was only four years old. Four. Her entire life was in front of her.”

Oh shit.
My hand landed softly on the curve of her shoulder. None of the words of comfort that flashed through my mind seemed appropriate or fitting.

She dipped her face down. “She had long blonde hair, and curls… I tried not to look at her face while we worked on her. I just couldn’t. That was someone’s baby. Someone’s daughter. I lost her before we could get her into the O.R.”

I rubbed her back while feeling her pain. It was all too familiar for me.

“I’ve worked on injured kids before, too many to count, but I never had one die on me.” She drifted her eyes over to me. “Losing a geriatric patient is one thing. It’s still ha… hard, but I just try to tell myself that they’ve lived their life, that they’ve loved and lost and made their mark on the world. But babies? Babies aren’t supposed to die, not like that. I can’t shake the fact that I let her down.”

Words my counselor once told me came to mind. “You can’t blame yourself, Doc. I know you want to because it’s easy to do, but deep down inside you know it’s not your fault.”

Erin shook her head in disagreement. “I was upset and unfocused and had no business working another severe trauma. I didn’t have my head in the game and that’s all on me.”

I held my breath for a moment, recalling the days when I had to rip my own wounds apart. “Circumstances aren’t always within our control, Erin.”

“I know. It… it’s just been a lot to process for one day.”

I could only imagine how many of those cases were causing the massive trauma to her soul. No wonder she sought solace in a bottle. There were only so many ways to purge your system of the ugly crap and I was all too familiar with her chosen outlet. Seeing how torn up she was about losing a child caused a twin echo to burn into my chest. The lump in my throat suddenly became hard to swallow.

“I’m sure you did everything you could.” I wanted to take her hand in mine. “A very wise man once told me that sometimes it’s not within our power to stop bad things from happening.”

I heard the words come out of my mouth; if only I could keep remembering that myself.

Erin pushed her soup bowl away. “I should get going. I need to make some calls and get back to the hospital.”

Shit, she was running again. “Thought you had the next two days off?”

“I do but there are some things I need to do.”

I snagged her wrist before she could walk away. “Hold up. I get being a workaholic; been one myself on occasion. I also get that you’re upset and feel the need to fix something. But what I know for a fact is you have to take time for
you
every now and then or else the job eats you alive. Look at me, babe.” I turned her to face me. “What’s so important that you have to go in on your day off?”

This defeated woman in my hands was not the self-assured go-getter I’d seen in her personality before and it was killing me to see her this way.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

I held her firm. “Try me.”

She sighed, trying to hide that her lip was quivering. “I lost my fellowship yesterday, Adam. I need to see if I can fix it before it’s too late.” Her eyes were filling with unshed tears, which instantly brought back that burn in my throat. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now.”

Her voice was barely audible, barely above a whisper. Well, she was partially right; I didn’t understand what that meant but sure as hell could tell that it was hurting her beyond a level I was comfortable with. At least I could do something about that. What, though, I had no clue beyond helping her search for what she’d lost. “Was it because you lost the little girl?”

She shook her head no.